42 comments:

How can you even raise this point when Schäuble has a morbid fascination with the pressures of globalization and the necessary adjustments Europe must make to its welfare state. As we now know, this is also a preoccupation shared by Chancellor Merkel. But with this vision in mind, Greece is once again a means to an end. It is the first country in which a comprehensive rollback of the European welfare state was brutally put into effect. And brutally in your list translates freely to dead last.

How can we even speak of justice here. We have strong evidence now that none of the Greek politicians ever knew the underlying plot. The “muddle” arose because for reasons of political expediency, the europoliticians decided in May 2010 to hide their second rescue of the French and German banks by disguising it as “assistance for Greece”. Why? This was convenient for the banks, of course. But that was not the main reason. The main reason was that European politicians(X-Greeks) feared being punished by the electorate if they had to ask parliaments to endorse another round of direct assistance for the banks, which would have been necessary if the Greek debt had been immediately written down. So, instead, they asked for funds for Greece, which were then paid to the banks in various more or less direct ways. The result was that Greece ended up owing more and not less money and owing it not to banks but to governments and tax-payers. So all the Greek politicians, including stupid Tsipras, have saddled us with more debt and now they want reforms to justify it, which in turns means another 45 years of misery for the Greek people. None of the Greek politicians ever understood the deliberate sacrifice of our own society in order to save other interests outside Greek borders. They instead told us (and many still believe this like our buddy Urs) that it was us who brought it upon ourselves. No, what we brought upon ourselves was 20% of the total; the rest of 80% is a non-Greek problem which we now own and will turn our existence to hell.

Wrong G pap knew ecactly what he was doing. They explained it to him in a coloring book but he made they choice. He also made the choice because he knew he understood it was the only way to restructure greece. Would any of the changes come about if they wrote off our debt? Doubt it. And dont go translate this into me taking sides with the germans and nannycrats.

Like i said many years ago this is all staged and greece is the #1 test tube because we are the most resilient and hard to mold. Global governance is just around the corner.

Only reason they letting shackels done on greece is because there plan is boomeranging on them. 50 to 75 billion euro of black money floating internally is not healthy for their plans. It is perfectly healthy for us. To combat this they leave the shackles and allow us, hopefully for/to them, to gradually go back to how we were precrisis. They lose. Our memory is like an elephant. Even in the new success story, greeks will be cautious to live and be like precrisis. The 50-75 bil euro will balloon.

@VIn Austria we have a saying "bankrupt company, rich owner". Why? Because by the time the owner lets his company go belly-up, he has milked it for years, typically financed by bank loans and suppliers' debt. Most of the wealth he now has as owner represents losses taken by banks and suppliers. If done properly, there is nothing illegal about that but I have seen suppliers who went bankrupt because of that and they had to observe how the causer of their bankruptcy was living extremely well. In one case, a Greek supplier to an Austrian wood trader lost all of his receivables and committed suicide but they wood trader showed up at creditors' meetings in a brand-new top BMW limousine.

You are suggesting "bankrupt Greek state, rich Greek population". If so, the mechanics are as described above. If it was done properly, it was not illegal. But it is immoral as hell to claim that this is a healthy way of behaving.

Varoufakis in fact supported the bank run without saying so directly. His point was correct: the more cash Greeks took out of banks, the more the ECB would have to lend and Greece's leverage would increase. It's also one hell of an immoral proposition when the tax payers of some countries are having to put up money so that the non-tax payers of another country can cash-in!

Of course it is not healthy, but it is healthier than the medication that the planners we have now have for us. Local and foreign creditors. It is basic survival now. And within this shadow market everything trickles, where as their medication nothing trickles.

On paper Greece is healthier and this is good. On black paper we are also healthy and this is also good for us. Both transposing simultaneously will help overall and in the meantime have some kind of maintenance of differentiation, from the molding they want us to become.

There will also be loses and that is painful and unfortunate. I am not pro Varoufakis. I actually dislike him a lot and his theoretical ideas, as like you i was a fan of his pre being a minister.

But let me ask you where in the world in any organized economy are the rich paying off for the poor. Where is their morality. And judgement on our rich? Rich are rich period. Look at trump. He pulled such a kolotoumba which makes Tsipras look like a side show at the circus. In our current system there are unfair things but i believe it to be, much less than the crystal clear economies of the west. I even now see barter, which is very healthy.

Another question mr. kastner. What western nation aside Greece asks the business and companies to prepay their tax on the year to come? Do you find this fair? Do you find this logically to pre pay taxes on unknown and estimated income? Where have you seen in any western world nation 70% of income going directly to the government on those small businesses?

Mr. Kastner, there has been and is no balance in what these decision makers do FOR the people. The people, rich and poor have taken things into their own hands.

Greece was last on the list of people trusting their government. (Too lazy to find the link). 13%. 87% do not trust the government. What does that tell you?

It means one thing. People saying, "Fck off, we know you are going to continue to fck us so fck off, we will do our own thing to survive."

Also read an article the other day at kathimerini. Tourist receipts are so low that the government fast tracked the receipt lottery as to instigate people to pay by cards. Greece 73% index. Normal western nations 10%. Index of tax evasion.

Sunday i bought 4 pairs of shoes for 100 euro. All really nice look alikes to all the big brands. Made in Greece. If that small business is sourcing black raw materials while paying low wages providing an economical solution for me as opposed to chines crap made, provides 23% tax to the government threw the retailer I am all for it.

It breaks down to 23 euro to the government. Few euro to the small retailer, i estimate about 25 euro. About 20 euro for materials leaving 30 euro for the business. where that is also sub split. Isn't this a healthy split? Is there some immoral and unethical behavior in their?? Sure but it is beating eu asia dumping. That money is recycled internally and we all live off each other. Supporting each other to the means possible.

Funny, how after a generation-long succession of "socialist" governments people in Greece still perceive lack of social justice. That tells something about the sincerity, competence, morals of those governments

Social justice is something a developed country can indulge in, developing countries must first achieve justice. you cannot have a country where all people blatantly break the laws and at the same time call for social justice.Berliner.

@ Phoevos.Greece has always had an inequality problem, the crises did not start it. That the crises compounded it you can thank various Greek governments for, including the present. The solution to inequality is not more money, but better distribution.Think of it this way, at a Pyrrhus victory the winner has big losses, the Greek generals decided that the brunt of the losses should fall on the foot soldiers. Or the philosophical way, what is 45 years of misery for the foot soldiers when you think of eternity?Lennard.

Since you have threatened publicly in this blog that you have a certain time left in your life, you have put the fear of God in me as to not upset you unreasonably in any way your argumentation and cause an involuntary hastening of your departure from this blog (an event of grave consequences and unbelievable sorrow).

So I will try, pussy footing if possible, to softly explain to you that even though inequality and income distribution has been a persistent problem for us, undertaking the new obligation to save the eurozone via the nauseous "Greece rescue package - aka the saving eurozone from itself package" has grossly exaggerated and ballooned this problem to new ridiculous dimensions.

Now please take a deep breath, what I just said is not personal. I just thought that a properly framed argument might do this blog a bit of good.

Your eternal admirer (despite the fact that you have said in this blog that my only usefulness is to let my uncontrollable tongue speak so that you could properly gauge the sentiment of the other greek prisoners)

There is a notion which keeps coming up from time to time which is so convincing to some while, at the same time, so wrong in actual fact. It is the notion that the Eurozone's rescue program for Greece somehow loaded the country with debt (even Varoufakis has subscribed to that notion from time to time). And, to continue with this erroneous notion, if the Eurozone had not done that, Greece's debt would somehow have had to be written off because of the lenders' bankruptcy. Nothing is further from the truth!

The same people who repeat this wrong notion, on different occasions, blame the Eurozone for leaving only 10% of the new debt at Greece's disposal. Well, you can't have it both ways: either you are loaded up with new debt because 100% of it stays in the country or you are not. The latter was the case.

The Greek state assumed new debt from the Eurozone for 3 purposes: (a) repay maturing debt (mostly to private banks); (b) pay interest on the debt; and (c) finance primary deficits. Point (a) had a neutral effect. Points (b) and (c) increased debt. From 2010-2016, the accumulated primary deficits were just under 40 BEUR. Interest paid on the debt was probably 40-50 BEUR. In sum, Greece's debt increased by about 80-90 BEUR for these 2 reasons. At the same time, the 2012 haircut reduced the debt by about 100 BEUR.

The debt load which Greece complains about was already there in 2010. The only thing which happened is that the lenders changed and the interest rates were lowered.

I was totally opposed to the form in which the Eurozone attacked the problem (I once called for a "Nueremberg trial for EU elites" for bailing out the banks with tax payers' money via Greece). My point was that tax payers' money should have been used to bail-out the banks directly (once they had to write down their Greek loans). That would have cost less and the tax payers would have gained something, i. e. shareholdings in banks. The way it turned out, it cost tax payers much more and they got absolutely nothing in return. In short, not Greece suffered from the chosen form of rescue but, instead, the tax payers did.

Finally, there is, from time to time, this erroneous notion that if Greece had not been bailed out and if the banks had failed, somehow, and miraculously, Greece's debt would have been written down and/or cancelled. Nothing of the sort would have happened automatically. If a lender goes bankrupt, a bankruptcy judge (or a buyer of the assets) will attempt to collect the loans in full. In fact, a bankruptcy judge is often much more brutal in collecting debts than a lender.

I am sorry but you know your math is wrong. Supposedly the PSI (private SSeKtor involvement a la Nazi occupation which totally destroyed the Greek economy) lowered the Greek debt by 110 Billion. And today Greece has more debt than it ever had at any time in its modern history and a type of debt which not only can not be repaid (in other words is permanently stuck on Greece's back) because by design is not replaceble by any market mechanism you can think of, but also no one would ever lend Greece anything to repay such debt because how can you ever lend a country that already has 180% debt to GDP and not its own currency? Not only your European nonsense in saving your bloody eurozone permanently scared Greece for life but it also prevends it from breathing unless you say that is o.k. to breath. Good luck in maintaing such falsehood. I am watching my clock to see when the dam breaks and then we will see who the eff is naked or not.

P.S. Stop using bankruptcy terms that only apply to individual and not countries. The only way to make a country comply with such "lender's nonsense" is to occupy it which is precisely what you have done. But not for long, nemesis is coming and will leave nothing standing.

At year-end 2009 (i. e. before the first rescue loans), Greece's debt was 300 BEUR. Today, it stands at 325 BEUR. So that's the extent to which Greece was 'overloaded' with debt (don't forget that the increase was largely due to the bank recaps).

Any more questions about facts? Pardon me for not responding to fiction.

You are using arbitrary dates to tell a mickey mouse story for your own audience. Lies don't cut it with me. And I absolutely hate liars.

The crisis did not start in 2009 for Greece.

Greece had about 235 Beur government debt at the end of 2008. European mismanagement and inaction caused that debt to spiral to 380 Beur in late 2011. Recognizing its adhorent mistake the Europeans(aka Berlin) quickly plundered Greece and caused its debt to go down to 280 Beur by refusing to honor debt to Greek banks but not hesitating a bit of paying off their own banks that had lent to Greece (uber hypocrisy in action).

European mismanagement, foot dragging and uber intransigence caused the Greek debt to balloon again to 330 Beur today.

First you lied to us that you cut our debt (but only using our own money to do so) and then you allowed the debt to exceed what it was in early 2008 which was roughly 250 Beur.

You relied in the lack of sophistication of the average Greek and the lack of access towards reliable sources and you fabricated all sorts of witch's brew of lies and misrepresentations.

It's all in here. I suggest that you click on the 10yr or Max version of the graph and study it well because what you say does not hold up. Maybe in totalitarian societies but not in Greece. So please change your story and drop the lies. I detest lies and liars are not my favorite people.

And oh, btw Kleingut. The credit rating agencies tell a completely different story from the one you are spinning.

As of October 2008 (the official start of the crisis and that is universally around the world start of the crisis and not the start of the crisis according the Austrian Almanac of farming), Greece had an A rating and stable outlook. And your disgusting European games show you who really caused the Greek debt to explode (look up Berlin and Brussels for that). If your german boys had an iota of intelligence and/or competence about them they would NOT have let a completely manageable situation to get out of hand and then blame it on the victim of their own adhorent incompetence:

Who cares what was the debt leve at the end of a year? The crises don't start or end in order to accommodate end year figures.

The crisis started for Greece when Merkel created the ring of fire (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal)by refusing to act as a unified eurozone entity. In essence, Merkel told everybody that countries needed to fix their own problems and this immediately caused Greek lending rates to go from 3% to 24% (8-fold increase in a matter of days). This in turn caused a fairly manageable Greek debt to skyrocket. When eventually a non-existent eurozone decided to rescue its own banks disguising the plan as a "Greece rescue or the laughable Greek bailout as you call it" the damage to Greece was enormous. Your banks were rescued and our banks destroyed. Our economy destroyed. And now saddled with debt that could never be repaid.

Just tell me, in Austrian if you wish, how professional is this amateur job? And where do you want me to send your decorations for this total screw-up? When PIMCO the king of bonds were saying in 2009 to all investors avoid buying the bonds of the "ring of fire", do you think he was talking about Greece or stupid Merkel that set the bond ring on fire for all the world to see?

You don't seem to know that the first rescue loans were disbursed in May 2010. Only from then onwards could Greece have become 'overloaded' with debt by the Eurozone. Regarding Greece's A-rating back in 2008, that's like saying sub-prime had a AAA-rating back in 2006.

What you call the ring fire was not Merkel's prerogative but, instead, is provided for in EU treaties, which Greece also signed, as the so-called 'no bail-out clause'. Merkel's crime was not that the created a ring of fire but, instead, that she violated EU treaties (or let's be polite: she legally circumvented them after being blackmailed by France).

If you really think that Greece's debt was fairly manageable and that it was only punitive interest which made it explode, well, then keep thinking that. If you really think that Greece ever borrowed at 24%, then keep thinking that as well. Neither are serious propositions but it seems hopeless sometimes to overcome your prejudices with facts.

Not only your euroincompetence left Greece with much higher debt than she had in 2008 but also you halved the Greek GDP which is a far more serious crime and a clear sign of idiocy on Europe's part.

Shall we get into charts and graphs to show the undisputed truth?

Tell me in a few words what sort of good have you done for Greece except in your case observing the victim of mismanagement that YOU have created. And YOU = all clueless eurobozos like Urs for example.

Since you and your readers need education then let's proceed with the awful task of trying to teach "well meaning" and "concerned" citizens of the eurozone prison.

If the eurozone had an ounce of competency, it would intervene early 2009 and brought the Greek debt quickly (and only with a fraction of the money spent- 40 to 50 Beur would have been more than enough) somewhere in the 2007 levels:

Also if the idiots you tend to support had any education or competence in economics they would have made sure that at no time the debt to GDP ratio for Greece was more than 100%. Again this meant early intervention of which apparently you eurozone geniuses know nothing about:

So now, after you saddled my country with your profound nonsense and gigantic mistakes, you are trying to sell us a fairy tale than if we do "reforms" (in other words, prescribed self-misery for at least another 10 years but most probably 45 years) then, who knows (most would be dead by then) maybe in the second half of the 21st century we might see something different.

Then there is a possibility of war since a nasty version of any world conflict would make all this nonsense irrelevant and you will go down in history as the "good people" who "tried but neither you or the Greeks were lucky enough". You made a mess but you tried and that is what counts. Not that you let everybody down by your extreme incompetence but finally that you got together, saved your banks, and gave Greece a "tough love" deal which has wiped out an entire Greek generation. Hey, the eurozone prison is still standing, the Greeks are trying but they are Greeks and God knows if they will ever succeed or not. Very nice story for a children book.

If you only had paid more attention to facts, as I had asked you to, you might have noticed that the article was not written by a frustrated British housewife but, instead, by an Icelandic journalist with significant experience in Iceland's crisis. That's why she emphasizes the difference between Iceland and Greece.

One major difference, of course, relates to honesty, particularly honesty with numbers. As I read in today's Ekathimerini, the liars, damned liars and Greek liars are still free but the one and first person who was honest about Greek statistics is again facing the threat of being made a scapegoat.

Herr Kleingut,Greek society has been "post facts" long before the Trump campaign discovered and popularized them. Numbers don't matter and it is always the others who waste, over-borrow, steal from the state, cheat on taxes, etc. If you live in Greece you are going to experience that everywhere from the macro to the micro (friends and relatives) level. Trying to convince Phoevos to acknowledge and accept facts goes against his deep seated beliefs, and therefore a waste of time.KK

Instead of trying to compare Iceland to Greece as if Vikings have anything to do with Greeks why don't you absorb the lessons of nearby Greenland which was the first country to leave the EU. Furthermore, take into account what the people of Greenland say about the incompetent and frustrating EU.

Thanks for reminding why I have rejected already this Frances gal who looks something out of the Ornithological Society of the English countryside.I was not even aware that I had tried to reason with that worthless POS. What I total waste of time on my part. Sorry, it won't happen again.

@ KK.It is not so much "post facts" as a duality consisting of dreams and realities. The imagined dream world is the person and nation they wish to be (seen as). The reality is pretty much that, reality. To a certain degree they are all aware of the 2 worlds, but will only acknowledge the one. Many Greeks meet the real world the first time late in their life. Some, like Tsipras, manage to live 40 years in their dream world only. Some, transfer to reality when doing their daily work (it is hard to deny the existence of the 800 dishes you have to wash). To be convincing to themselves, and ultimately to others, they have to believe in their dream world, few manage to do that all by themselves. Some resort to the parea, the mind like clique with same view of nation and themselves, there they amplify their views and confirm each other. Some resort to a political party, doing pretty much the same. The ultimate mass autosuggestion can be seen at events like the recent referendum. Huge crowds, many of whom have not even voted oxi, celebrate themselves as heroic winners, just to get a dose of reality the next day. Not that that reconcile them with reality, on the contrary, it gives them a strong distaste for it.So when Tsipras say that he has not lied, he just believed he could carry out his program, he is right in his own eyes, because he had "deleted" reality.And when Phoevos denies reality and insist on his dream world, he is right by the same token.PS. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes).Lennard

The problem with your little theory is that you have chosen the wrong person (Moi,le roi Grec de la raison et de l'illumination) to demonstrate fantasy since by nature I am grounded in reality and in fact a very practical person hardly inclined towards the imaginary.

It would appear perhaps that you yourself are prone to fantasies because you continuously promote a version of Greece that hardly exists but as is typical of racial discrimination you have long formed an opinion based on your biases and you keep harping on it. And every time you are faced with the facts you quickly dismiss them and you revert to your old positions of "same all, same all".

And the sad thing, of course, is that apparently, you will take such self-made notions to your grave because it's apparently too late for you to reform your malformed opinions at your age. Or is this another of my fantasies?

Btw, I am told that according to the karma theory people like you have a really high chance of returning to life after death as versions of Minnie(aka meanie)Mouse haunting us all in an effort to redeem yourself. Keep at it, you are doing a fine job.

The more I am exposed to comments by Greeks here and over at the Guardian the more I value your insights and explanations. It is funny and sad at the same time how some commentators here feel continuously encouraged to validate your comments by trying to refute them.Urs

@ Urs.It helps to live and work here for 15 years accumulated, you get to know what reactions to expect when you press the different buttons. If you argue an issue just slightly critical of anything Greek , expect to be told who invented democracy (and Hawaian pizza), what your nation was doing at that time, what your mothers moral habitus was, when you will depart this world under painful circumstances and that you are a racist Greek hater. Do not expect a response to the issue at hand.When I have guests from abroad I point out the individualistic behavior of the Greeks, usually at Syntagma square. When sufficient people (40-50) have gathered, waiting to cross the road when the light changes, I take one decisive step onto the road for full red. The screaming of brakes and flying of profanities when the crowd runs out is impressive.Lennard